IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orstsc/v3y2018i1p306-312.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Absence-Neglect and the Origins of Great Strategies

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas C. Powell

    (Said Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 1HP, United Kingdom)

Abstract

Great business strategies originate in a top management worldview that seeks to implement bold strategic change in the external world. This worldview generates confident strategic actions capable of producing extreme success. However, it also generates catastrophic failures and lower returns on average. This is because action-oriented managers pay abnormal attention to the observables of sense experience while neglecting the world of absence, a bias I refer to as absence-neglect. Absence-neglect is the cognitive tendency to notice presence more than absence—for example, movement more than stillness and noise more than silence. This paper examines the origins of absence-neglect and its consequences for strategy formation, firm performance, and social welfare. I argue that societies can reduce the economic and moral risks of “great” strategies by cultivating a more balanced discernment of presence and absence.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas C. Powell, 2018. "Absence-Neglect and the Origins of Great Strategies," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(1), pages 306-312, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orstsc:v:3:y:2018:i:1:p:306-312
    DOI: 10.1287/stsc.2017.0037
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2017.0037
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/stsc.2017.0037?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mary Tripsas & Giovanni Gavetti, 2000. "Capabilities, cognition, and inertia: evidence from digital imaging," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(10‐11), pages 1147-1161, October.
    2. Daniel A. Levinthal & James G. March, 1993. "The myopia of learning," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(S2), pages 95-112, December.
    3. James P. Walsh, 1995. "Managerial and Organizational Cognition: Notes from a Trip Down Memory Lane," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(3), pages 280-321, June.
    4. Carlo Colantuoni & Barbara K. Lipska & Tianzhang Ye & Thomas M. Hyde & Ran Tao & Jeffrey T. Leek & Elizabeth A. Colantuoni & Abdel G. Elkahloun & Mary M. Herman & Daniel R. Weinberger & Joel E. Kleinm, 2011. "Temporal dynamics and genetic control of transcription in the human prefrontal cortex," Nature, Nature, vol. 478(7370), pages 519-523, October.
    5. Andrew Inkpen & Nandan Choudhury, 1995. "The seeking of strategy where it is not: Towards a theory of strategy absence," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 313-323.
    6. Jerker Denrell, 2003. "Vicarious Learning, Undersampling of Failure, and the Myths of Management," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(3), pages 227-243, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giovanni Gavetti & Joe Porac, 2018. "On the Origin of Great Strategies," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(1), pages 352-365, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dean A. Shepherd & Jeffery S. Mcmullen & William Ocasio, 2017. "Is that an opportunity? An attention model of top managers' opportunity beliefs for strategic action," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 626-644, March.
    2. Ng, Desmond W., 2011. "Thinking Outside the Box: An Absorptive Capacity Approach to the Product Development Process," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 14(3), pages 1-28, September.
    3. Kaplan, Sarah & Tripsas, Mary, 2008. "Thinking about technology: Applying a cognitive lens to technical change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 790-805, June.
    4. Daniella Laureiro-Martínez & Stefano Brusoni & Nicola Canessa & Maurizio Zollo, 2015. "Understanding the exploration–exploitation dilemma: An fMRI study of attention control and decision-making performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(3), pages 319-338, March.
    5. Dirk Martignoni & Anoop Menon & Nicolaj Siggelkow, 2016. "Consequences of misspecified mental models: Contrasting effects and the role of cognitive fit," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(13), pages 2545-2568, December.
    6. Giovanni Dosi & Luigi Marengo & Evita Paraskevopoulou & Marco Valente, 2017. "A model of cognitive and operational memory of organizations in changing worlds," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 41(3), pages 775-806.
    7. Yanfeng Zheng & Michael L. Devaughn & Mary Zellmer-Bruhn, 2016. "Shared and shared alike? Founders' prior shared experience and performance of newly founded banks," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(12), pages 2503-2520, December.
    8. Saerom Lee & Felipe A. Csaszar, 2020. "Cognitive and Structural Antecedents of Innovation: A Large-Sample Study," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(2), pages 71-97, June.
    9. O'Reilly, Charles A., III & Tushman, Michael, 2007. "Ambidexterity as a Dynamic Capability: Resolving the Innovator's Dilemma," Research Papers 1963, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    10. Wendy K. Smith & Michael L. Tushman, 2005. "Managing Strategic Contradictions: A Top Management Model for Managing Innovation Streams," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(5), pages 522-536, October.
    11. David Maslach, 2016. "Change and persistence with failed technological innovation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 714-723, April.
    12. Hazhir Rahmandad, 2008. "Effect of Delays on Complexity of Organizational Learning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(7), pages 1297-1312, July.
    13. Tomasz Obloj & Krzysztof Obloj & Michael G. Pratt, 2010. "Dominant Logic and Entrepreneurial Firms‘ Performance in a Transition Economy," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 34(1), pages 151-170, January.
    14. Dirk Martignoni & Thomas Keil, 2021. "It did not work? Unlearn and try again—Unlearning success and failure beliefs in changing environments," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(6), pages 1057-1082, June.
    15. Li, Mingxiang, 2021. "Exploring novel technologies through board interlocks: Spillover vs. broad exploration," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    16. Mary J. Benner, 2010. "Securities Analysts and Incumbent Response to Radical Technological Change: Evidence from Digital Photography and Internet Telephony," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 42-62, February.
    17. Hazhir Rahmandad, 2012. "Impact of Growth Opportunities and Competition on Firm-Level Capability Development Trade-offs," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 138-154, February.
    18. Felipe A. Csaszar & Daniel A. Levinthal, 2016. "Mental representation and the discovery of new strategies," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(10), pages 2031-2049, October.
    19. Tim R. Holcomb & R. Duane Ireland & R. Michael Holmes Jr. & Michael A. Hitt, 2009. "Architecture of Entrepreneurial Learning: Exploring the Link among Heuristics, Knowledge, and Action," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 33(1), pages 167-192, January.
    20. Dena Lawrence & Federica Pazzaglia & Karan Sonpar, 2011. "The Introduction of a Non-Traditional and Aggressive Approach to Banking: The Risks of Hubris," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 102(3), pages 401-420, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orstsc:v:3:y:2018:i:1:p:306-312. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.